Herzfeld research paper receives VIP recognition

Photo/Mike Lovett

Professor of Biophysical Chemistry Judith Herzfeld

Sept. 27, 2010

A research paper from Professor Judith Herzfeld's research group in the Department of Chemistry, has been named a Very Important Paper (VIP) by Germany’s Angewandte Chemie, a leading international chemistry journal. The paper outlines a new approach to conducting studies of large molecules, such as those that are critical for cell function.

According to Herzfeld, measuring the magnetic resonance of atomic nuclei is an increasingly important tool to understand the structures and motions of large molecules. But the observations needed to produce the data are time consuming and expensive.

The Herzfeld group, with collaborators at the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory at MIT, succeeded in combining two different established methods into a new approach, called “Spectroscopy by Integration of Frequency and Time domain data” (SIFT).

Using SIFT, experiments can be performed more efficiently and economically, using standard magnetic resonance equipment.

“A procedure that would have taken one week now takes two days,” said Herzfeld. “It frees up expensive equipment for other experiments.”